Soundpainting

Some notable ones were Earle Brown, Sun Ra, Frank Zappa, Alan Silva and Butch Morris among many others.

[8] Walter Thompson attended the Berklee school of Music from 1970 to 1974 where he studied composition, piano, woodwinds and percussion.

[9] Afterward, he received a scholarship from the National Endowment for the Arts to study composition and woodwinds with American composer Anthony Braxton.

[10] Thompson, the son of a visual artist, wanted to create a new way of structuring music not in advance but in the moment.

Brown's approach to composing and performing pieces was inspired by the methods of various artists such as Pollock's spontaneous decision-making process and Cunningham's use of chance operations in his choreography.

[14] Soundpainting's purpose is to summarize plenty of composing methods, coming from all kinds of creative processes (theatrical, choreographic, musical, visual…), and to go beyond the idea of a pre-set score.

"What-signs" refers to what kind of content (material) the performers are being asked to play/perform (a long sustained sound, a repetitive rhythmic sequence...).

As a multidisciplinary language, Soundpainting has made great contributions to the hybrid medium of composition and performance practice.

[31] Even if Soundpainting is not yet formally accepted as a teaching tool in any music, theater, dance or art school in general, it is taught in a lot of them: The conservatoire du Centre in Paris,[32] the Berlin University of the Arts (Universität der Künste),[33] and even for some online events,[34] among many other places.

The first Soundpainting Think Tanks were held in the summer of 1998, 1999 and 2000 in Woodstock, New York, at the Byrdcliffe Arts Colony and were a month long.